SpokenVerse | My Sweetest Lesbia (Catullus 5) by Thomas Campion (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded May 2013 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
This was poem of the week in The Guardian, 22 March 2010. It drew more than 100 comments: guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/22/poem-week-sweetest-lesbia-campion
It's a loose translation of Catullus 5: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_5
When Catullus and Thomas Campion lived, death was possible at any time. In fact, you were more likely to die young. Now we think the opposite, that we will grow old and then die. Then, half of the children born would die before they were five years old. As you got older, death became less likely. Life expectancy increased. Human life span was the same as it is today - maybe even better - about 100 years. But life expectancy was short - perhaps 20 years.
As an aside, this is true of some species. Song birds, for example, can live for 30 years. Yet most of them die in the first 6 months. If they get through the first six months of life unscathed, then their life expectancy increases greatly.
Lesbia was his pet name for Clodia, his mistress and the wife of Metellus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clodia
He named her because of her passionate nature, after Sappho, the poetess from the Isle of Lesbos who was the first Lesbian - er, the first to be associated with that name, I mean.
Lesbia's nickname had nothing to do with a preference for women. It was more a reference to her sensitive sensual nature. People weren't classified according to their sexual preferences back then.
The word Lesbian was first used to mean female homosexuality in Victorian times - and that usage became current in the 20th century. . In Catullus' time and for centuries afterwards the word Lesbian would merely mean somebody from Lesbos.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian
"What praises would be best
Wherewith to crown my girls?
The rose when she unfurls
Her balmy, lighted buds
Is not so good
So fresh as they
When on my breast
They lean and say
All that they would
Opening their glorious, candid maidenhood".
Victorian verse doesn't get more explicit than this . It was written about Sappho by a poet called Michael Field, who turned out to be two lady poetesses, Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Field_(author)
Paintings and Sculpture:
Acme and Septimus, by Frederic Leighton
Lesbia, by John Reinhard Weguelin
Courtship the Proposal, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Sappho by Giovanni Duprè
Madame Recamier, 1805, by Francois Gerard
Catullus Comforting Lesbia, 1773, by Antonio Zucchi
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And, though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them: heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But, soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armour should not be,
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of love:
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.
When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,
But let all lovers, rich in triumph come,
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;
And, Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.
This was poem of the week in The Guardian, 22 March 2010. It drew more than 100 comments: guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/22/poem-week-sweetest-lesbia-campion
It's a loose translation of Catullus 5: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_5
When Catullus and Thomas Campion lived, death was possible at any time. In fact, you were more likely to die young. Now we think the opposite, that we will grow old and then die. Then, half of the children born would die before they were five years old. As you got older, death became less likely. Life expectancy increased. Human life span was the same as it is today - maybe even better - about 100 years. But life expectancy was short - perhaps 20 years.
As an aside, this is true of some species. Song birds, for example, can live for 30 years. Yet most of them die in the first 6 months. If they get through the first six months of life unscathed, then their life expectancy increases greatly.
Lesbia was his pet name for Clodia, his mistress and the wife of Metellus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clodia
He named her because of her passionate nature, after Sappho, the poetess from the Isle of Lesbos who was the first Lesbian - er, the first to be associated with that name, I mean.
Lesbia's nickname had nothing to do with a preference for women. It was more a reference to her sensitive sensual nature. People weren't classified according to their sexual preferences back then.
The word Lesbian was first used to mean female homosexuality in Victorian times - and that usage became current in the 20th century. . In Catullus' time and for centuries afterwards the word Lesbian would merely mean somebody from Lesbos.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian
"What praises would be best
Wherewith to crown my girls?
The rose when she unfurls
Her balmy, lighted buds
Is not so good
So fresh as they
When on my breast
They lean and say
All that they would
Opening their glorious, candid maidenhood".
Victorian verse doesn't get more explicit than this . It was written about Sappho by a poet called Michael Field, who turned out to be two lady poetesses, Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Field_(author)
Paintings and Sculpture:
Acme and Septimus, by Frederic Leighton
Lesbia, by John Reinhard Weguelin
Courtship the Proposal, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Sappho by Giovanni Duprè
Madame Recamier, 1805, by Francois Gerard
Catullus Comforting Lesbia, 1773, by Antonio Zucchi
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And, though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them: heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But, soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armour should not be,
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of love:
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.
When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,
But let all lovers, rich in triumph come,
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;
And, Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.
